Through a Glass Darkly
by GeoffreyF
Summary: Morgana has worked for years to bring about Camlann, and now, finally, it is here. Despite her best laid plans, however, she brings about more than she means to. Warnings for character death, obviously. Dark!Merlin.


**A/N: Thematically, although not in a plot sense, this could be considered a companion or sequel to "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls", but it can be read just as easily alone.**

* * *

Through a Glass Darkly

_"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."  
- _1 Corinthians 13:12_  
_

Camlann, they called it in after days, the crooked trap. The day King Arthur fell and the glories of Albion faded into darkness. It was the greatest battle the land had seen: scores upon scores of armoured knights, the air thick with sorcery, swords glinting through the smoky haze. The world would remember that final fight: Arthur and Mordred, mortal enemies, sharing victory and defeat. But Camlann was not about them, not really.

* * *

_Morgana!_

She heard her prince's cry and turned, breaking the back of the knight with whom she had been toying with a wave of her hand. He needed her; he had been so stubborn, but she had known he would. Mordred was a great sorcerer, one of the greatest in the land, but she was a High Priestess of the Triple Goddess, the last, and in any case, there would be Emrys to deal with.

A path cleared for her as she strode towards Mordred; her own knights knew what would happen to them if they got in her way, and the others could guess well enough. She smiled tolerantly to herself; Mordred had held out quite well, all things considered. She had expected him to summon her within minutes, but it had been longer than that, much longer. But perhaps she should not have been surprised; Arthur was weak, he always had been, however strong he had appeared to the world. She had grown up with him, and she knew the truth. A strong fighter, but a weak man, and such a one was easy prey for her kind.

She had been surprised, though, that Emrys had not sought her out. He must have known that she was his greatest enemy, his greatest competition; she who had begun on the path to this momentous day all those years ago, she who had moved her pawns just so and brought this glorious day upon them all. He was strong, she knew that, but she was stronger now; she had been preparing for this for years. And after all, the mighty Emrys he might be, but he was still just Merlin, a jumped-up bastard serving boy meddling in matters beyond his understanding or intelligence. He would crumble before her and beg, just like the rest of them.

She heard her prince's cry and hurried forward. The battle raged around them, but, as if in honour of the occasion, Arthur and Mordred had been given a wide berth. They both looked dreadful: Arthur's left sleeve was soaked with blood, while a wide but shallow slash on Mordred's cheek drew attention from his ruined left hand, a tangled mess of bones and flesh. Morgana frowned; he should have called her long before now. His idiotic pride would doom them both; this was no chivalrous duel, this was life and death, _her_ life and death. She had never had much time for the so-called honour of knights, and her patience with Mordred's foolishness was spent.

She saw Merlin across the clearing, ignored or shunned by the warriors as she was. He inclined his head towards her ironically, a gesture she returned. In a strange way, she was almost glad to see him. There was a comfort to their endless battles, almost a routine; they each knew the way the other would fight before anything began. She wondered if he had watched Mordred and Arthur from the start; if he had, she had to admire his restraint, for all he had done was keep Mordred from using sorcery, perhaps just by being there. She would have stepped in long ago.

Well, never mind. She was stepping in now. She had to do it subtly, of course, because Emrys was standing right there, but with a nick here, a cut there, the tide turned. Mordred saw her and smiled; Arthur saw her and all but wept. He had never really got over her so-called betrayal, she thought with satisfaction. Such a very weak man.

And then all it took was a distraction. She held her hand behind her back and sent a gigantic spurt of energy into the air to her right; Merlin turned involuntarily as the sparks sizzled through the haze, and that was all she needed. Two spells – one on Arthur's sword, one on Mordred's – and she was done. It was over. She had won.

Merlin turned back to the scene and blanched, staggering back into a discarded shield. "NO!" she heard him roar, and laughed to herself; she had done it, she had known she would: she had killed Arthur Pendragon, the supposed once and future king, weakling and murderer and destroyer of her kind. The future was hers.

"NO!" she heard again, and laughed harder. Merlin would fall too, for there was nothing he could do; to hell with the prophetess and her visions of crystal caves, she would kill him herself, but he could wait. She didn't know why there was still fighting all around her; the battle was over as surely as was Arthur's wretched life. She wanted to stand over him as he died, for her smile to be the last thing he ever saw; but Mordred needed her attention first. His hand still looked terrible, and anyway, Arthur would spend hours dying; she would make sure of it.

As she made her way down to Mordred, where he stood unsteadily over the victim he thought was his, arms raised in victory, she saw Merlin start towards them, but thought nothing of it. It wasn't until Arthur's blade, Excalibur, the work of that monster Kilgharrah, sank deep into Mordred's torso that she even realised anything was wrong.

As Mordred toppled over, as undignified in death as he had been glorious in life, she found herself looking beyond him, into Emrys's hollow eyes. And looking into them, seeing the hatred flowing from them, she realised that the only time she had seen such emptiness, such bleak malevolence, was when she looked in the mirror. She was Morgana Pendragon, called le Fay, last High Priestess of the Triple Goddess and high champion of the Old Religion, but for that one horrified moment, she felt like a girl again, and Morgana of Cornwall didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

* * *

A blast to his left – Merlin turned without thinking, his eyes searching for some new devilry of Morgana's. But there was nothing there, nothing but a few harmless sparks. And with that, he knew.

His head snapped back to the battle in front of him, just in time to see Mordred's dark sword slide between Arthur's ribs.

No.

_No._

Not like this.

Arthur gave a soft cry and crumpled, as Mordred raised his arms in victory. Merlin heard something burst forth from his lips, saw Morgana laugh gloriously, saw Arthur, _Arthur_, collapsed, bleeding, dying.

And as he staggered forward, his mind a horrified maelstrom of grief and anger and disbelief and love, he watched Arthur spend the last of his strength to take his murderer with him, the murderer _Merlin_ had saved. Merlin fell to his knees in the mud and felt for Arthur's wound, summoning the healing magic, he was so good at it now, he knew he could do this, he could, he _must_.

And then Arthur died.

It wasn't how he had imagined it, in his fevered nightmares. Arthur didn't say anything to him, or to anyone else. He wasn't lying there defeated by some spell, seemingly asleep, a great and noble king who would be honoured for all eternity, even as he left it. He was just Arthur, lying in the mud with blood streaked across his spattered tunic; he was just Arthur, and he was dead.

For a moment, Merlin simply sat there, staring at the empty body, watching what used to be Arthur's eyes, willing some life to spring from them against all hope. But hope, well. Once it had sustained him, but now he saw the truth. Hope was for fools.

And then she descended, a rustle of black and purple, to cradle the murderer's head where he lay. She looked broken, shattered; he was reminded of her screaming as she held her sister in Camelot's royal hall, and of that look in her eyes when she realised that he had poisoned her. Then, he had hated himself for what he had done to her. Now, in this moment, it was his only comfort.

For a long minute, they simply sat there, the two of them, and each took the only joy left to them from the other's despair.

Then she broke the silence.

"Merlin?"

She dared. She _dared_. She who had brought everything to ruins, all their work, his destiny that he had suffered so much for, and most of all, she who had brought this day to pass. _She_ dared to say his name, and in that tone, questioning, almost hopeful. She dared.

He stood, and so did she, shrinking back before him. She seemed to have forgotten that she was a powerful sorceress for the moment; her eyes were locked on his.

A knight came careening into him, and Merlin fell back, and as he did, Arthur _moved_. Something in Merlin's heart stirred, and he knelt again, and then he saw that the hand had only moved because the knight had tripped across the body as he fell.

The chaos reasserted itself, and it was too much. Swords clashed, the cracks and booms of spells rent the air, and it was all around him, all there, and he couldn't think, he couldn't, not with the noise, the tumult, the tempest, it was too much, too loud, he couldn't bear it, he just couldn't, not any longer.

"ENOUGH!" he screamed, and the noise stopped.

There was instant silence. Morgana's eyes darted from his and widened as she saw the thousands of combatants across the plain freeze and collapse where they stood. At first, Merlin thought he had sent them all to sleep. Then he saw the blood oozing from their eyes, their noses, their ears.

Morgana started to laugh, a high, deranged sound, piercing the silence like an icicle. Her eyes met his again, challenging him. _"Do it!"_ she shrieked at him through her cackles, through her tears. _"Just do it!"_

He lifted his hand to cast the spell, but suddenly that didn't seem enough. Not after what she had done to him, not after she had brought the promised age he had worked so hard for crashing down around his ears, not after she had killed Arthur, not after that. He took a step towards her and she reached out her arms, as though to embrace him. He started to laugh himself as he stepped forward, through her flailing arms, to place his hands around her neck.

Merlin hated killing, normally, even if it was an enemy. It wasn't what his magic was for; it wasn't what _he_ was for: he was the bringer of life, not its extinguisher. But as his fingers closed around Morgana's neck and she began to choke, he felt an entirely unfamiliar emotion rise in him, seeping into his heart, and this time, as her mad eyes began to fade and suddenly reminded him of the last time she had been dying in his arms, he enjoyed every moment: her desperate hands, the realisation in those empty eyes. She was in no shape to offer any resistance; her mind had fallen with the rest of them and it was only her magic that had saved her. Now she was in no state to use it, and he smiled as he choked the last breath out of her and threw her corpse to the ground.

For a long while he stood there, a lone figure, so small amidst the thousands of bodies strewn around him. Then, as the sun began to set, he turned westwards, watching it dip below the line of the hills, staining the vapours red as it sank. He stepped over Gwaine's body, ignoring the blood seeping from his friend's face, and made for the hills, for after all this, he was still alive. He didn't know what to do, not now, because he was the only one left. Suddenly an image sprang into his mind – subterranean waters, shining rocks, the crystal cave. His mind clung to the final shred of his destiny that remained to him, and he set his feet towards it, as the sun's last light faded across the field of Camlann.


End file.
